


Sing to Me Your Sorrows

by QuagmireMarch



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst with a Happy? Ending, Enabled by Waffle, Horror-ish, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26366167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuagmireMarch/pseuds/QuagmireMarch
Summary: Yuri has been luring sailors to their deaths for centuries. Now it's Victor's turn to lead Yuri back to life.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 4
Kudos: 53
Collections: Urban Legends on Ice





	Sing to Me Your Sorrows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Verity (PenelopeGrace)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PenelopeGrace/gifts).



Yuri hadn’t been born on this desolate outcropping of rocks, but he suspected once he might have died here. Alone. Betrayed. It’d explain the pain that tore sorrowful music from his throat and tears of blood from his eyes.

But knowing did nothing to ease the ache inside him, the dark pull of song and sea and endless void of cold emptiness that whirled at his core. So frozen. All he wanted was warmth, company, peace. And so, when he saw the ships he sang. Unable to stop himself in his desperate need. He called out, his melody woven of longing and loss.

The ships answered, turning their bows to his rocky shores. And sinking. Always sinking. The sailors drowned, the vessel destroyed. And Yuri, Yuri remained as he had ever been.

Alone. Cold. Singing.

##  
  
The man washed up upon his shores during the deepest part of the night. Silver hair glinted like moonlight, and for many moments Yuri simply stared. He’d imagined such things before only to have them fade and break like smoke when he got too close, delusions of his ever slowing heart.

Yet this mirage remained, beautiful and shining under the glittering moon. Yuri had never seen someone so masculine and perfect, a dream of flesh and bone. And when that dream suddenly turned and started coughing up waves of seawater Yuri dared something he hadn’t in so long.

He hoped.

##

Victor hurt. Tossed by violent seas and crashed onto rocks would do that to a man. Even one as accomplished as him. Mother Nature cared nothing for reputations. And unlike the monsters he hunted, she could not be bested.

He’d really thought having a deaf captain would allow him safe passage through the Siren’s Channel, but alas, he had not accounted for the mutiny of the crew desperate to reach the voice. Or the stupidity of men too proud to wear the wax plugs provided for their safety.

Victor doubted any others had survived the way they turned on one another to be the only one to reach their deadly prize. Another thing so odd about this particular siren. Too bad no one had lived to warn Victor of the problem.

Never mind that. Now, he needed to concern himself with survival. This small crop of rocks offered no shelter, no food, and the air had turned cold. He needed to get warm and dry if he could. But, looking around he was unsure how to do any such thing. Nothing but cold stone surrounded him, not even lichen. Just the deep waterlogged gray.   
  
Wait.

Victor went still as he spotted the shine of starlight against something. It had come and gone, flicker quick, but he knew he’s seen it. Eyes in the darkness.

Shivers rippled along his spine and arms as his senses went on high alert. Hunter or prey, he didn’t know what he faced, but either way, he’d not go unarmed. Rocks might be terrible food, but they made handy weapons.

“Please, don’t.” The voice came from everywhere, as if carried on the ocean breeze. Sweet, a little sultry, and so very, very sad.

Victor knew that voice, but he’d never heard of sirens speaking before. The ones he’s slain had no language but melody and death. He lowered his weapon, but he did not release it. “Where are you?”

“Here.” A figure moved, a man in shape, but skin the same gray. as the stone around him, lines of glimmering lightness at his flanks and shoulders. They might have been scales or gems. Impossible to know at this distance.

As the creature moved into the light Victor made out his toned figure, soft cheeks, and shy smile that hid sharp teeth. But it was his eyes that truly captured Victor’s attention: rich brown, liquid as rum and deeper than the ocean itself. These were not the eyes of a monster. “What are you?” The whisper escaped Victor unbidden.

“I’m Yuri.”

Such a simple answer to so complex a question. It surprised a laugh from Victor, one that turned to a cough in his water-beaten throat.

Yuri moved, lightning fast and sinuous as an eel, at Victor’s side in an instant. “You’re hurt. Let me help you.”

Victor flinched away from the creature’s touch, gray. skin burning cold where it brushed his own. “Stay away.”  
  
With a sigh Yuri backed away. Streaks of red marred his cheeks. “I have...let me bring you wood at least. For a fire.” He didn’t wait for a response, simply darted away, invisible against the rocks as he went.

He returned with planks of wood, gray. and warped from being in the water, but dry now. The remnants of a previous ship to run afoul of this accursed place.

Victor took it anyway. He needed the warmth a fire could bring, and becoming one more casualty saved no one.

##

Yuri hovered at the edges of the man’s camp, wanting so much to simply speak with him, to share stories or secrets. Even just to know his name would be a gift beyond imagining. But instead, he kept his distance. Hid in the daylight, letting the sun harden his skin until he became just another part of the outcropping. Yuri did not sleep or eat; he could wait out the man who hunted for him in the mornings, armed. Always armed.

At night the man slept. He tried not to, but unlike Yuri he needed rest. And sometimes, when the man seemed so close to collapse as to hurt himself, Yuri hummed softly, helping to ease the man to slumber.

It was those nights, sure the hunter would not rouse, that Yuri left his gifts. Bits or wood, fabric from masts to make a shelter, fish and oysters collected from under the waves where Yuri, with no need to breath and unmoved by the tides could go when his hunter could not.

In this way, weeks passed. It wasn’t what Yuri needed, this silent co-existence, but it was so, so much more than he’d had before. He dared not hope for more, even as his traitorous heart began to beat just a little faster which each passing day and every accidental glance.

And then, one day, the man spoke to him. “Victor,” he said, voice rough with disuse but still the most beautiful thing Yuri had ever heard. “My name is Victor.”

##

He didn’t know what possessed him to speak to the creature, wasn’t even sure the hunched lump he took for a figure was the man. But it had been so long, and the thing—Yuri – had done nothing to harm him. Quite the opposite, in fact.

And, if Victor were honest, he’d never been good at isolation. He craved company the way most men needed air. His sanity required it. If reaching out to a murderous monster counted as sanity. Perhaps not, and the desolation had driven him mad.

Trapped here, really, did it even matter which was the truth. He needed something, and Yuri might be able to provide it. So, he reached out.

##

Time passed like a dream, days blending into seamless memories. They spent the days talking of everything. Their hearts, their dreams. Yuri didn’t remember anything before his time on the rocks, just impressions, but he wove beautiful tales of might have beens.

Some nights he sang for Victor, soft and sweet, and even more rarely some of those nights he danced. Victor liked those nights best, watching the way Yuri swayed, the music he made with his voice completely in sync with the rhythm of his body. Those nights he almost forgot being trapped with a monster.

Those nights they both forgot to be so lonely.

##

Eventually, a ship appeared. Still far in the distance, but visible. Yuri watched the ship as it sailed. Victor watched Yuri. Waited for the music to come, for the monster to reappear. When Yuri went to the other side of the outcropping, Victor followed, expecting a fight.

Instead, Yuri stood before a pyre of wood almost as tall as himself. Blood tears fell at his feet. “You can build a fire,” he whispered. “Call for help. Go...go home.”

“You want me to leave?” Victor stared at the pyre, out at the water. It looked deeper on this side. Safer. A rowboat might make it.

“No.”

“Then why?”

Yuri turned away, refused to face Victor. “Because you deserve more. But…”  
  
Victor stepped forward, reached out. But he didn’t touch, hadn’t touched Yuri since that first night. He still remembered the chill. “But?”

“You might...” he sighed and looked over his shoulder, eyes wide and inconsolable, “you’ll have to stop me. From singing. I...when I’m alone, I can’t help it.” He turned fully and set his chin up, looking scared but determined. “I won’t fight you. Just...make it quick. Please?”

“Yuri.” Victor stared, barely able to comprehend what the man asked of him. He knew, they both knew if Victor left there would be other ships, that Victor couldn’t—wouldn’t – doom those future sailors. If he did this it was...final.

He couldn’t do it. Not like this, not when he knew Yuri. Yuri who made up stories about the constellations and laughed at Victor’s stupid jokes. Who danced so beautifully Victor’s heart ached. Yuri who somehow in all those long days together, Victor had come to love.

“No,” Victor whispered. “No.” He stepped forward, closer, close enough to feel the cold that radiated always from Yuri’s skin.

“You have to.” It came out cracked and broken as Yuri took a step backwards.  
  
“I don’t.” Victor stepped forward, hand out, offering.

“Victor.” A wail, a lament. Music that burst from Yuri’s skin and filled the air between them. Calling, begging.

Victor answered, caught Yuri by the back of the neck. Kissed him, swallowing the note, taking the music into himself. He barely noticed the cold, only peripherally saw how the gray. leeched from Yuri’s skin, lightening even as Victor’s darkened, both becoming a softer shade. Becoming something new. Together.

And as Yuri responded, returned the kiss, as his skin warmed and breath became ragged Victor thought it so perfectly right that after so many years of killing monsters that it should all end like this, with Yuri, bringing one back to life.


End file.
